2020 Financial News

challenges this approach, highlighting how unreliable recent performance can be for future returns.The study tracked the top 10 equity mutual funds in 2014 and mapped how their rankings shifted annually through 2025. It also analysed rankings based on three-year returnsThe findings illustrate why investors should dig deeper into historical returns, not just stop at funds’ recent performance, and why investors must even go beyond returns for their fund selection.The study does not disclose fund names, instead tracking rank movements over time.

₹702 crore, KHIL’s year-on-year revenue growth went from negative figures in FY20 and 2021 to ₹10.2 crore and ₹10.8 crore in the subsequent post-lockdown years. Their profits went from approximately ₹25 crore in 2020 to ₹312 crore in 2023. “We had our value really down before covid,” Vishal says, “now it’s come up.

Even as Vodafone Idea has received a breather on most of its adjusted gross revenue dues, a near-term obligation remains. The telecom operator will need to pay ₹700–800 crore in AGR dues related to FY18 and FY19 over six years, including the current financial year, according to two officials familiar with the matter.This amount is outside the ₹87,695 crore in AGR dues as of 31 December 2025, which the government has frozen, and Vodafone Idea will pay it between FY32 and FY41.The reassessment process to arrive at Vodafone Idea’s final AGR liability is expected to take four to five months, one of the officials said.“In the Supreme Court’s 1 September 2020 order, the table of AGR calculations also included figures for FY18 and FY19.

Times of India reported that Warburg was planning to sell its stake in a transaction that could value IndiaFirst at more than ₹10,000 crore.Set up in 2009, IndiaFirst offers a range of life insurance products, including term plans, savings and retirement solutions. Its initial shareholders were Bank of Baroda, Andhra Bank, now part of Union Bank of India, and Legal & General Middle East Ltd.In February 2019, Legal & General sold its stake to Carmel Point Investments India Pvt.

Even in a tough year, the Nifty has delivered 7–8% returns, Systematic Investment Plan flows remain strong, and this phase has been more of a time correction than a price correction, said Sunil Singhania, founder of Abakkus Asset Manager. As economic recovery gains pace, he is more optimistic about 2026 and 2027.While some markets, such as South Korea, have posted 60–70% gains in 2025, these gains reflect a catch-up after years of flat returns and are driven by just a handful of tech and AI stocks, making them vulnerable if the AI trade cools.

While the hikes appear modest when measured per kilometre, their impact is concentrated on sleeper and second-class passengers, who account for over 70% of railway travel in India and are typically from lower-income groups.Under the latest fare structure, fares on mail and express trains have risen by 2 paise per kilometre for both AC and non-AC classes. Second-class passengers on ordinary trains travelling more than 215 kilometre (km) will now pay an additional 1 paisa per km.The latest fare rationalisation is expected to generate additional revenue of around ₹600 crore for the Indian Railways in this fiscal year.The July revision had also raised mail/express fares by 2 paise per km for AC classes and 1 paisa per km for non-AC classes, while second-class ordinary passengers were charged 0.5 paise per km after the first 500 km.The cumulative impact of both revisions becomes more pronounced on longer routes.

Mint explains why the rule is being enforced now, who it affects, and what changes brands must make.The FSSAI has clarified that under the Food Safety and Standards Regulations, 2011, “tea”—including variants such as Kangra tea, green tea and instant tea—must be obtained exclusively from the plant Camellia sinensis. Any infusion or blend made from other plants, flowers or herbs does not meet this legal standard and therefore cannot be named or marketed as “tea”.The decision flows from the Labelling and Display Regulations, 2020, which require every food package to clearly indicate the “true nature” of the product.

Following years of aggressive hoarding, Indian corporations are starting to dip into their cash reserves to fund dividend payouts and acquisitions, but not capital expenditure (capex).According to a Mint analysis of data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the pace of cash accumulation hit an eight-year low by September 2025.The analysis of CMIE data for a common sample of nearly 2,000 listed firms, excluding banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) companies, showed that cash and bank balances rose just 1% year-on-year to about ₹5.4 trillion by September. The pace is a far cry from the pandemic period, when heightened uncertainty pushed median cash balances up by nearly 15% annually between September 2020 and September 2024.Companies are now sitting on a cash pile equivalent to nearly 5% of their total assets, up from 3.5% in September 2017 and 4% in September 2020, the analysis showed.

Mint a decade ago under the ominous headline ‘Is the history of the 1930s repeating itself?’ that concluded with: “History is unlikely to be repeated in the same manner, but with capitalism in crisis, and both the Centre and organized Left in retreat, human tragedy of indeterminate magnitude is likely. Whether the post-war liberal order will survive the right-wing onslaught is moot.”Developments over the last decade only fuelled my fears.

To mark National Consumer Day on 24 December in honour of India’s Consumer Protection Act of 1986, the government has made “efficient and speedy disposal through digital justice” this year’s theme.It aims to highlight the consumer’s right to grievance redressal under that law’s 2020 update, which set up adjudicatory bodies at the district, state and national levels to look into disputes. Given the judiciary’s overload of cases, this expansion was welcome.This January saw the launch of e-Jagriti, a unified platform for online redressal that explains the 2025 theme’s digital aspect.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Even a small, inadvertent oversight in declaring foreign assets can trigger intense scrutiny and label honest taxpayers as holders of ‘black money’, causing financial and mental stress. A Mumbai-based professional learned this the hard way after receiving a penalty order from the tax department, which accused him of concealing foreign assets and imposed a ₹40 lakh penalty under the Black Money Act (BMA).

Earlier this week, the government proposed major changes to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) through the introduction of a new bill in the Lok Sabha. The Viksit Bharat-Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, 2025, proposes to increase the employment guarantee under the rural employment guarantee scheme. In 2025-26, the central government allocated ₹86,000 crore to MGNREGS, one of the biggest expenditure items in its budget.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mumbai: A plan by the National Payments Corp. of India (NPCI) to restrict an app to a little over a third of the overall transactions on fast payments platform UPI by the end of 2026 is a tough ask, regulators and financial sector experts said.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd’s takeover of Coastal Cloud in its largest acquisition since going public wasn’t a one-off—it is the seventeenth such buyout of a Salesforce-centric firm by an Indian software services provider in the past decade. Yet, the focus on creating products for Salesforce systems has become increasingly vital as artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes businesses.

India’s government finally announced the implementation of the four labour codes passed by Parliament about five years ago, starting 21 November 2025. These four, namely the Code on Wages of 2019, Industrial Relations Code of 2020, Code on Social Security of 2020 and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code of 2020, were meant to rationalize 29 old labour laws by replacing them with new codes, as recommended in a 2002 report by the second National Commission of Labour set up in 1999.The objective was to simplify labour laws and make them effective—for the benefit of workers as well as employers.Reforming these laws has been part of the governance agenda of every successive government since 1991, when India’s economy underwent broad reforms in various other domains.Given the multiplicity of labour laws enacted since independence, the idea of revising them was also to make them enforceable (or justiciable) and reflect the contemporary reality of changing labour relations.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When N. Srinivasan walked into CG Power on 26 November 2020, he knew he had accepted the most daunting assignment of his career.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A debate is raging over the accounting treatment of Nvidia chips and other equipment that tech companies are splurging on. This time, some of the AI companies’ critics may be overreaching.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. China remains one of the world’s most powerful economies, with its influence still expanding in critical sectors. Its high-tech industries continue to grow, it is pushing aggressively for leadership in artificial intelligence, and its dominance over rare-earth minerals recently helped it clinch a trade truce with Washington.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. New Delhi: Mining and metals conglomerate Vedanta Ltd, through its promoter entity Vedanta Holdings Mauritius II Ltd (VHML), has moved the Delhi high court challenging the income tax department's claim that the group gained undue tax advantage of about ₹1,308 crore through the misuse of the India–Mauritius tax treaty.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When Chennai-based space-tech startup Agnikul pitched to Artha Venture Fund in 2020, managing partner Anirudh Damani said it took only minutes to recognise the founders’ deep domain expertise. “It was obvious they weren’t theorizing.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. ANIRUDH SHARMA was a computer-science undergraduate with no training in aerospace when he co-founded Digantara, which gathers intelligence on satellite movements, in 2020. Today it employs 150 people in India, Singapore and America and is valued at more than $65m.